


The Trees Remember

by originally



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Community: got_exchange, Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen, Magic, Weirwoods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 19:53:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2553545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/pseuds/originally
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various characters and their interactions with weirwoods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Trees Remember

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theoldgods (missandei)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=theoldgods+%28missandei%29).



> Many thanks to [Phoenixflame88](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflame88/) for making this piece immeasurably better. Any remaining problems are mine. Thanks also to [theoldgods](http://archiveofourown.org/users/theoldgods) for giving me such an inspirational set of prompts and letting me flex my magic/religion spec muscles.
> 
> Contains spoilers for _A Dance with Dragons_ and references to the previewed Theon chapter from _The Winds of Winter_. Originally posted at [got-exchange](http://got-exchange.livejournal.com/132335.html).

**Ygritte**

The trees were getting sparser now the further north they got, the wind colder and more biting. Ygritte pulled her hood more tightly around her face and settled herself against the trunk of the big weirwood at the edge of the clearing where they'd set up camp. She had never been this far into the Frostfangs; she'd grown up in a village further south of here where the weather was milder, and had barely ever travelled further than the Milkwater before. This was a new kind of cold, the kind that seeped into her very bones.

She pulled a handful of goose feathers from her pack, slipped her knife out of her boot, and picked up the long, springy weirwood sticks she had collected to whittle into shafts. She would have need of plenty of arrows before this war was over. Ravens chattering in the trees and the wind rustling the leaves lulled her as she whittled and fletched almost in a trance, her fingers following the familiar movements without her needing to think about it. Instead, she turned the day's events over in her mind.

They had disturbed the bones of half a hundred ancestors looking for Mance's horn, and who knew what kind of curses that might place on them? Spirits and angry shades could not be defeated with arrows, no more than white walkers could. She shivered and shifted closer to the fire, offering up a silent prayer to the tree above her. Did they have gods in the south? Her mother had sung her songs of Bael the Bard as a babe and she knew about castles and walls, but what of weirwoods? It was clear that Mance was right, that they did need to fight or they would perish—but what would it be like to live beyond the Wall? She had never even seen it, nor met a Crow, though she would be happy enough to kill one when she did. To kill a hundred.

"Lord of Bones, you and Harma take some of your scouts and keep an eye out. Orell's seen Crows on the move." Mance's voice broke into Ygritte's thoughts, startling her. A raven perched on a weirwood branch startled too and took off in a flurry of feathers.

She thought Rattleshirt might argue; everyone knew that he and Harma Dogshead hated each other and would never work together in a thousand years. But he only eyed Mance with distaste for a long moment and then turned away, gesturing for them to follow. She stowed her quiver, hefted her bow onto her shoulder and set off after him, her footsteps crunching in the packed snow. There would be time enough for thinking when the war was done.

 

**Stannis**

He could smell the stench of blood and smoke even here, in the relative stillness of the godswood. Stannis picked his way slowly between the trees, wary of unseen perils hidden beneath the thick covering of snow. His injured leg left spots of blood along the unspoiled white as it dragged behind him. Suddenly his foot caught on something sharp, causing him to stumble; when he looked back he saw a human ribcage, scoured clean by the weather and the crows. This place had seen more than its share of death in recent times.

The crows were here now, a score or more of them staring down at Stannis from the branches of the heart tree and quorking menacingly. He was sick of crows, sick of trees, and sick of damned _gods_. He should have executed the turncloak with his sword when he had the option, not listened to Farring, or Whoresbane, or the wretched Greyjoy girl. He had spent far too long listening to fools and birds prattle about sacrifices to gods both old and new; he had been loath to lose either side but his delay had angered both sets of followers and now the boy was gone. Vanished.

He scoffed to himself as he gazed into the weirwood's red eyes. _Lord Eddard's gods, indeed. Is Eddard Stark watching me now and mocking me, I wonder?_ He had left behind the straggling remains of his army in the castle. Some of them were still whole at least; the rest were dead or dying, lying bloody on feast tables or on hay carts or half-buried under fresh snowfall. The Boltons had been routed and the Bastard killed at the cost of several of Stannis' best men and almost his leg, but he was not yet secure in his hold on the North. Jon Snow had been a fool not to take the offer of legitimacy, and that foolishness had left Stannis with a green girl in Winterfell and a host of northmen angling to act as regent. He sighed and leaned back against Ned Stark's tree, taking the weight off his injured leg. This problem would take some consideration. Which of them would make a suitably biddable husband for her? He could not afford another Young Wolf; though Arya Stark struck him as more mouse than direwolf, the northmen might rally round her all the same.

The flicker of a night fire became visible behind the curtain wall after a while and the sound of chanting floated across on the still air. He wondered how long it would be before the Queen's Men tried to burn their prisoners.

No, the night may be dark and full of terrors, but Stannis Baratheon was done with gods.

 

**Theon**

The godswood rang with the sound of laughter and the angry mutterings of ravens disturbed from the heart tree. Jon Snow's face had flushed a deep red, and Robb was trying to contain himself, though his eyes were shining with mirth. Even Jory chuckled.

"I don't see what's so funny!" Jon squawked indignantly and Theon threw back his head and laughed loud and long. Sparring in the yard always got his blood rushing, singing through his body and making him feel invincible, making every jape that much funnier, every girl that much comelier.

"She wanted you to fuck her, Snow," he said. She had; a young whore, hanging around the training yard making moon-eyes at an oblivious Jon Snow.

Jon spluttered satisfyingly, still blushing crimson, and Robb punched him in the arm. Theon thought it was past time they made a man of him, though whose place it would be to buy a whore for a bastard, he couldn't say. No one had done so for Theon; he had dealt with his own manhood himself, fucked a kitchen girl in the shade of that sentinel tree just there. His cock stiffened slightly to remember how pliant she'd been, her firm stomach and teats, her bright brown eyes.

The four of them sank into the hot springs with sighs of pleasure. It felt good to soak away the rigours of the training yard, to let the dull ache in his limbs and bruises on his torso ebb away into the warm water.

Robb nudged Theon's leg with his own, grinned over at him. "Do you think Jon would even know what to do with a girl if he got hold of one?"

"Oh, for—give it a rest, Robb!" Jon burst out, and then they were wrestling in the water, splashing and flailing around. Jory yelped as Robb's leg came perilously close to his face and, with a growl, he joined the melee, ducking Robb's head under the water. Theon was forcibly reminded of a time when he and Asha had been swimming in the sea at Lordsport. Rodrik and Maron had swum underneath him, each grabbing one of his legs and pulling him down into the black depths, down, down until his lungs screamed and sparks danced in his vision, leaving him panicking and flailing even after they'd let go. He could still remember their cruel laughter as he broke the surface spluttering and choking.

He submerged himself deeper into the springs, letting the water flow over his shoulders, over his chin, over his nose. This was the godswood after all, and the water was where Theon's god was. _One day I will sail back to Pyke_ , he thought. Watching Jon Snow pin Robb against the bank as Jory laughed fondly at both of them, he wondered why that disquieted him.

 

**Melisandre**

Her red cloak dragged along the ground behind her, leaving a trail in the newly-fallen snow. The Queen's Men marching next to her were shivering and stamping their feet, but Melisandre had never felt the cold. She would rather have come here without them, but it was important to maintain appearances. She moved between the rows of soldier pines and sentinel trees with their branches spiralling upwards, linking together to create a canopy that almost blocked out the miserable grey sky and feeble sunlight. Her destination was not far now and that was all to the good. Half a league beyond the Wall, terrors lurked.

When she came upon them, she found that the weirwoods were curious things. They grew in a perfect circle, a grove of nine milk-white trees with bare, skeletal branches and grotesque faces carved into the trunks like gaping, bloody wounds. She could feel the thrum of magic, of potential, as she stepped inside the ring of trees. The Queen's Men were clearly reluctant to enter, so she dismissed them with a wave of her hand and turned her attention to the largest of the weirwoods, the one with the most fearsome face. Its blank red eyes regarded her solemnly.

She ran her hand delicately along one pale branch, feeling the smoothness of the bark beneath her fingers and considering. She did not believe that gods resided in these wooden prisons—the Lord of Light was the only true god; he and the other one—but perhaps there was _something_ here. There was power in Kings' blood, after all, and perhaps there was also power in the blood of weirwoods, the spirits of the North. When she had burned the dead wood of the Seven back on Dragonstone, she had not felt even the tiniest spark—but a night fire made from a living heart tree, what power could that give her? _The things I might see in those flames. Would they finally show me which of them is Azor Ahai reborn?_

She thought about a body languishing in an ice cell, about a white wolf howling alone in the haunted forest, about a man lost in a snowstorm, perhaps for good. She thought about a raven flapping above her head, frantically shrieking "Snow!" and "King!" over and over, and wondered which she was truly meant to follow. She thought about a weirwood face with a thousand eyes and a boy with a wolf's head and she shivered. Yes, there were many reasons to want to rid the world of these false gods, these champions of cold and darkness. The white bark was cool under her fingers and she itched to set it ablaze, to produce a fire that might ignite the north and destroy the enemy once and for all. But if he were to return and find she'd done so—

Abruptly, Melisandre turned on her heel and stalked out of the circle, back towards the Wall, with the Queen's Men scrambling to catch up.

 

**Samwell**

The Ravenry was quiet and still in the night-time blackness. The hour of the eel had given way to the hour of ghosts and Sam was alone with only his thoughts and the ravens roosting in the crenels for company. He stole across the courtyard in his soft kidskin boots, an extravagant expense worth every stag; old Archmaester Perestan had chambers on the lower floor and was a notoriously light sleeper. His feet made instinctively for the patches of noise-dampening moss now. Sam would rather avoid being caught creeping around the Citadel in the dead of night, though he was prepared to feign drunkenness rather than admit his true purpose. The Sphinx would mock him and the others already thought him queer enough with his black clothes and Marwyn's books, and even after all this time he worried about what Leo Tyrell might report back to Lord Randyll. He held his chain with one hand, to better avoid the meagre set of links clinking together. The black iron was cold to the touch, the copper warmed by the heat of his body. Moonlight glinted off the Valyrian steel, making the ripples in the metal appear to dance and shift. That particular link had been hard and bitter won, had earned him no friends amongst the acolytes and had given the Archmaesters to treating him with suspicion. But Jon had entrusted him with a task. Maester Aemon had passed on his knowledge of dragons and Daenerys and the Prince that was Promised. He had a duty.

Sam pulled his black cloak tighter around his shoulders and knelt before the big weirwood in the centre of the courtyard. He reached out a hand to touch its gnarled and twisted trunk, to feel the softness of the moss under his palm. The weirwood's red face gazed down at him impassively, but the susurration of the wind through its branches could almost be mistaken for murmuring voices. He closed his eyes, tugged at his collar, fought back against the images of dungeon walls that flickered behind his eyelids every time he slept.

"I am the sword in the darkness," Sam whispered to the tree, to the ravens, to the silence of the night. "I am the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men."

It had been a long time since Sam Tarly had prayed to the Seven for anything, a long time since Aemon, but now he prayed nightly to the old gods, to Jon's gods, to Gilly's gods, to give him the courage to do what needed to be done.

High up in the weirwood's branches, a raven opened one beady eye and quorked. Sam got to his feet, took a deep, centring breath, and began his silent journey back to his chambers.

 

**Bran**

Bran blinked and found himself back in the glowing half-light of the cave. For a precious moment he had forgotten where and who he was, had forgotten that he was Brandon the Broken. He had seen so many others, had glimpsed their lives and tasted flashes of hopes and fears and sorrows. He glanced up at Lord Brynden where he sat encased in his weirwood throne, just as immobile as Bran.

"Were they—" he began, and then stopped, feeling foolish.

"Were they real?" Lord Brynden finished, his voice like dry leaves.

Bran had to strain his ears to catch the words. There was so little life left in him now; only the faintest spark remained in his red eye. _Soon he will sleep and never awaken_. The idea of it scared Bran. _That will happen to me some day_.

After an eternity, Lord Brynden spoke again. "Greenseers may see what has happened, what is happening, what is yet to happen."

Bran leaned forward as much as his useless legs would allow, anxious to hear.

"It may be that these futures are potential only. Perhaps we can shape them. Change them." He paused, and Bran listened to the distant sound of rushing water somewhere in the depths of the cave. "I have told you that the past remains the past, but I have tried to guide the future. His future." Lord Brynden's voice trailed off into nothingness. He closed his red eye and returned to corpse-like stillness amongst the twisted roots.

Bran thought about the others he had seen through the eyes of the trees and the birds and wondered which of them were alive and which were already dead, which futures still had the potential to be shaped, whether one of them was the 'he' that Lord Brynden spoke of. _The past remains the past, Bran_. But part of Bran was desperate to return to those scenes of Robb and Jory and Jon Snow and even Theon Greyjoy laughing and joking, of his father praying, of his sisters running and playing amongst the trees. He didn't need to change the past, only _see_ it… but what would happen to his body in the present, if he lost himself in visions of what could never be altered?

Bran breathed in slowly and closed his eyes once more, focused instead on the future. This time, he would make himself heard.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Trees Remember (but sometimes they forget)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7568482) by [La Reine Noire (lareinenoire)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/pseuds/La%20Reine%20Noire)




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